Louise Bourgeois, the influential and prolific sculptor who worked frequently with glass as a medium, died last Monday, May 31st, in Manhattan. She was 98. Born on Dec 15th, 1911 in Paris, she was the second of three children to Louis and Josephine Bourgeois. Much of her work was inspired her emotionally conflicted family life growing up. She famously stated “My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.” She had great affection for her mother, and saw her as a pillar of strength, and anguish and disdain for her father, who carried on a 10-year affair with their live-in tutor. After attending various art schools in Paris. in 1938 she married Robert Goldwater, an art historian, and migrated to New York. Although Bourgeois’s art career spanned her entire adulthood, she wasn’t widely recognized for her work until she was in her her seventies. Among her hundreds of awards and honors, in 1996 she received the First Annual Urban Glass Award for Innovative use of Glass by a Non-Glass Artist.
Louise Bourgeois manipulated materials and forms in an deeply personal way that produced intensely poetic and emotional pieces. Her interest in Jungian archetypes and psychoanalysis contributed to her rich and multifaceted work, which often looked at the dualistic nature of sexuality, domesticity, security, and power. Her work consisted of both sculptures and installations which included wood, steel, bronze, glass, mirror and found objects. Although glass is a single element in her extensive palette, her sensitivity to the material made a powerful impact on her audience.
Louise Bourgeois, Cell (Glass Spheres and Hands), 1990-93. Glass, marble, wood, metal, and fabric. H 86, W 86, D 83 in.
Cell (Glass Spheres and Hands) (1990-33) is one of her best known pieces which feature glass. The “Cell” series consists of small rooms or vignettes refers to both a biological building block and well as a prison cell. Each cell has the dual quality of safety and entrapment, security and punishment. In Cell (Glass Spheres and Hands) five large glass sphere sit on chairs, in a circle around a pair of crossed marble arms on a fabric covered table. The setting references both a domestic space, and an institutional space, and in enclosed by a steel and glass grid. The viewer is only able to view the interior though panels that have been knocked out or broken. In this piece Bourgeois creates a symbolically charged, yet emotionally ambiguous space where every viewer reads it differently dependong on one’s personal history.
In her piece, In Le Defi (1991), Bourgeois displayed a collection of glass objects, perfume bottles, mirrors, glasses, which were all used by her personally. The pieces are set on delicately balanced shelves in a heavy painted wooden crate. The delicacy of the glass contrasts the massiveness of the pile and the work expresses both the burden and delight of owning precious things. In a review of the piece, Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector writes, “Fragile yet resilient, ephemeral yet exceedingly tangible, Le Défi is essentially a three-dimensional poem that bespeaks the emotional struggles at the core of Bourgeois’s art.”
Louise Bourgeois innate knowledge of materials, and expressiveness is unparalleled. An amazingly prolific artist, she made a powerful impact on the art world and will be remembered as one of the masters of the 20th century. According to the LA Times, when asked how she wanted to remembered in art history books, she responded: “I’m not that interested in art history. I was married to an art historian and had enough of it. Art history is one thing and being an artist is another. I know I’m part of history, just a tiny stone in a very big wall.”
—Kim Harty